Spouting off about beer in the Pacific Northwest (and wherever else we're drinking)

Monday, December 2, 2013

Beer & Cereal: The Final Installment

In this final installment of beer and cereal pairings we get to the cereals that I figured would be the most challenging. From what I learned in the first and second rounds I suspected these two would require mild beers, not something that I usually drink. However like many a beer geek, the intrigue of a beer I've never had before often outweighs the known satisfaction of a favorite brew so there was the possibility of finding new beers to enjoy.

Silver Moon Voodoo Dog ISR was my first chance beer of the night and when I found it underwhelming I turned to the Apple Jacks. The cereal was sweeter than I remembered but the overpowering sweetness was tempered by the beer. In return, something about the apple-cinnamon flavors in the cereal enhanced the hop profile of the beer, a definite improvement.

My next beer selection, Fire Mountain Cold Cold Billy, went similarly although it came as more of a surprise. Deviating from the standard look of most Fire Mountain labels, Cold Cold Billy was billed as a double IPA, something that should be right up my alley. It wasn't. I suspect that it was the variety of hops used that failed to wow me so I looked to the cereal for some assistance.

Since the Apple Jacks were already opened I started there and quickly decided it was a solid, "NO." Moving onto the Froot Loops I was pleased to find that the sweet, artificial fruity combination in the cereal managed to sharpen the focus of the beer, pushing whatever flavors were "meh-ing" me to the background, allowing me to enjoy the beer more with the cereal than on its own.

The moral of this edition of the story was that two very sugary cereals managed to improve two disappointing beers. Had I not tried both the Apple Jacks and the Froot Loops with Cold Cold Billy I would have suspected it was merely the sweetness of the cereals that worked. Instead something about the apple-cinnamon flavors worked far better with that beer while the fruit flavors spoke to the other better. Go figure.